One Game at a Time

The Terps held their senior day for Beth Gillming and Jade Brown this afternoon at Comcast Pavilion and upset the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 3-2. It was a pretty fun game to shoot because it was very tight. Greg was there and I chatted with him for a bit before he had to head over and adjust his strobes for basketball. The match went into 5 games so it took awhile to shoot. I was pretty good about deleting bad photos during the event and as a result my post processing was very quick. Please go read my article on the DC Sports Box page and take a look at my photos. I used ISO 1600 for the most part and 1/320th or 1/400th of a second on f2.8.

On Sunday afternoon the Terrapin volleyball team played the Duke Blue Devils.

This promised to be an exciting game because the Terps were unbeaten at home and Duke was ranked #2 in the ACC conference. The game was televised on CSTV and there were a ton of fans in attendance. The weekend day games always gather the largest crowds, but this one was especially large due to the opponent.

Unfortunately the Terps fell in 4 games. They put forth an excellent effort but the Blue Devils were just too much for the Terps. I managed to get several good shots, and Greg was there too.

I took up my normal position for volleyball and sat in the front row as close to the net as possible. I noticed that Greg was standing right next to the net on the other side of the court. I wanted to do the same but I didn't think that anyone could go over there unless they had a credential or worked for the athletic department.

Eventually Greg came over to the crowded side and sat down on the floor. He was back behind the white line, and he was back behind the dashed white line as well. None the less, a referee from the ACC came over and asked him to move during a timeout. The same referee asked me to move earlier in the season. I noticed that Greg chatted with him but eventually moved.

When Greg came over to talk with me I asked him about it and he said that the referee was wrong about where he could sit but he wasn't going to argue with him. I was happy to see that it's not just me that manages to be told what to do from time to time.

I offered him my spot so that he could get some good shots for the team while I moved to another place. He said he would find a different place to shoot but I said it was ok and moved on.

As the bleachers filled up the staff started letting the fans start sitting on the other side of the gym (behind the teams). With that side open I decided to move over and take some shots. There were fewer people in the stands on the other side and I thought that would give me more room to move around.

The other side also allowed me to take photos of the coaches during timeouts. It was dark but I managed to get some decent shots.

I pushed the ISO up to 3200 and used 1/500th of a second exposure at f2.8. As usual I only brought my 70-200/2.8 VR lens. I considered bringing my 17-55/2.8 with the SB-800 speedlight to take some pictures after the game but decided against it. I didn't want to get in the way of the athletes and I wouldn't use any of the photos anyway for my story on the DC Sports Box. You can read my article here.

The shots at high ISO in Comcast Pavilion came out pretty well. When I shoot at high ISO on field sports the background is all black and the noise is very apparent. But when you're in a gym inside and the background walls and ceiling are gray the noise is less noticeable.

I tried to convince Greg to attend the women's soccer game this evening but he declined the offer. He likes to shoot day games so he can get a lot of good shots. But I like the early evening games because the light is so soft and colorful.

Still no news on the credential front. We'll be submitting some requests this week that will hopefully allow us to coverage some women's basketball games.

I'm a software engineering consultant during the day and that brings with it a bunch of responsibilities. As a consultant you're often paid much more than a salaried employee of a company, but you're expected to perform above and beyond the employees. You're supposed to be everyone's hero and have the answer to questions that come up.

One of my customers is an open source company named Zenoss. We made a release on Tuesday afternoon and I had a substantial amount of code that went into the release. As a result I was involved in a lot of the testing we were doing at the last minute of our "official" RPM. That required me to stay beyond my planned 4pm departure time.

As a result I was about an hour late to the Volleyball game. It's regrettable, but acceptable. Afterall, Zenoss is helping to pay my bills, whereas my photography is not (yet). I phoned ahead and let Al know that I was going to be late and that he should go ahead and head on home.

Al was going to meet up with me at the Volleyball game to give me a second battery for the D2H he sold me as well as a belt for us in photography. I didn't want him to have to wait for me so I said I would just hook up with him later in the week. He told me Greg was in attendance and I was hoping I'd catch up with him.

I was also looking forward to chatting with Joey Flyntz. He was the individual from Maryland that approached me during the Miami game and asked me to first check in with media relations prior to shooting a game. I had Al submit a request to him on Monday and strangely we didn't hear anything back from him. I wanted to talk with him to see why he hadn't responded.

Of course I had to stop at home prior to heading to the game. Before I left for work I debated putting my gear in my car. I thought: "Nah... I'll just make sure I leave at 4pm..." I should've gone with my instinct and put the bag in the trunk. There have been 2 or 3 other occasions where I've been caught behind schedule and without gear.

Having to stop by my house on my way to an event can add anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes to my travel time. It's not so much the time inside my house as it is the time it takes to get off the road, drive through the local roads with lights and traffic, and then get back onto the highway and headed in the right direction.

I should also realize at this point that most of these shoots that I go on for Al are last minute types of things. They tend to be "btw there's a shoot this evening for some team... Can you cover it?" I end up going but I usually end up stopping by the house to pick up my gear.

I should just get in the habit of locking my gear in the trunk of my car. The only downside to that is increased risk to the equipment and the added trouble in the morning of moving my gear out to the car and then taking it in when I arrive home.

The shoot itself went pretty well. When I arrived I noticed Greg was on the far side of the court shooting. I was glad to see that credentialed photographers shot from that side of the court. I've been shooting from the crowd side and I get blocked pretty often by teenagers getting up to go out to the hall to gossip about some news. It's pretty annoying.

I also noticed that Greg tends to stand up to shoot his subjects. I've been sitting down while shooting for two reasons: 1.) I'm in the crowd so standing isn't an option. 2.) I tend to shoot while on my knees so that I get more looks of faces rather than the tops of heads.

Most players look downward to keep track of a ball while they dribble. The exceptions to this rule are volleyball players and basketball players (albeit even basketball players look down quite often). If you're down low you have a better chance to get a shot of their eyes. If you're standing you'll end up taking a shot of the top of their head as they look down towards the ground.

If I'm credentialed for volleyball one day I'm going to shoot standing up from the other side of the court. Greg's shots came out very well. Greg shot vertical and standing up. Most of my shots are from down low and some are vertical. As a result I have a lot of the gym wall in the background. Greg's background is the court. It's a lot more soothing that the cinderblock background I get.

The bricks in Comcast are painted white and so they tend to wash out the shot. On the other hand, the floor is a nice brown. If you shoot standing up you get more of the floor in the picture and it adds some much needed color to the shot.

I was also very impressed at the noise level in Greg's shots. It gives me new hopes for my D2H in low light. He must be using Noise Ninja or something. I know he post-processes in Photoshop and I imagine he's doing some noise reduction there as well. When you look at his shots online you can't tell that they were shot at ISO3200.

I shot at ISO1000 and 1/320th of a second. Greg's ISO3200 allowed him to shoot at 1/500th and it stopped motion. The next time I'm at a volleyball game I'm going to give ISO3200 a shot at 1/500th of a second so that I can stop motion on the spikes.

I'm also going to ask him what he does for noise reduction in post processing. Maybe I can get some good night-game use out of my D2H after all!

I looked around for Joey but couldn't find him at the game. At the same time I noticed that the person who has been responsible for denying us credentials was present. I asked Greg about it and he said that Joey was out of town for his honeymoon. That explains why he didn't respond to our credential request.

I didn't want to approach the other individual because I don't want him to know that I'm there shooting for the group that he's denying credentials for. I don't know him well enough yet to know how he would respond to that kind of knowledge.

I figured that if he approached me and asked why I was there I could always say that we went through the channels we were told to go through: look up the volleyball media relations person and contact them. If he gave me any grief I could plead ignorance and put a positive spin on it. Fortunately he didn't approach me.

I continued trying to get some more diversity in my photos, and I took a lot of pictures of the players serving. They came out alright. They're not too exciting but they do make for some great file photos.

I also tried to get some pictures of the back line bumping. That was a real challenge - you can't see who the ball is going towards until it practically reaches them. At 70mm on f2.8 the depth of field is shallow enough where you need to focus on 1 of the 3 players in the backcourt. I just try to do my best and watch their body language to see who's going to receive the ball. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time it didn't...

My articles are getting progressively longer and I'm finding that I have more to contribute the more I go to games. I suppose that's to be expected. As you get to know the players and the style of the game you can make more intelligent observations in your articles. I'm definitely enjoying writing more than I did originally, and the length of my articles shows that. My latest DC Sports Box article for volleyball is located here.

After the Volleyball game ended I split apart from Greg and headed over to men's soccer...

Saturday was a busy post-processing day, but it also had some shooting in it as well.

The Maryland women played the Miami Hurricanes in Volleyball at Comcast Pavilion around 7pm and I attended the game. I've enjoyed shooting and writing about Maryland's volleyball games and I was looking forward to this match tonight. You can read my DC Sports Box article here.

I've been shooting volleyball with pretty good results at ISO 1000 and 1/250th of a second on f2.8. Every now and I then I'll slow down to 1/200th or even a bit slower. You can get away with that when the players are at the net waiting for service. But if you get any slower you risk some shake from the camera or the players moving around in a noticeable fashion.

I continued trying to shoot more of the players in the backcourt, and I paid particular attention to Kenning, Gillming, and Schmelzle. I wanted to get a good photo of them for Kenning's dad to their high school and I managed to get my shot pretty early on. The 3 were lined up and I grabbed a shot of them prior to a serve. I think they'll like it.

I also continued getting shots of the attackers at the net. I decided not to go up to the top of the stands and shoot because you're pretty far away. I'm not a physicist but I was thinking about how light bounces off of subjects and is collected by the sensor in the camera.

The basic idea is that light bounces off of a subject from all kinds of sources. Let's say you are shooting outdoors. The sun is the primary light source, but there are additional sources of bounced light from trees, the ground, and other inanimate objects. Even the photographer is a source of bounced light.

With multiple light sources the light reflected off of the subject is going to be going in all kinds of different directions. The light bouncing off the ground and back up at the subject is going to reflect off the subject and head up towards the sky. The light bouncing off a tree to the left of the subject is going to reflect to the right of the subject.

Imagine the camera as a bucket that catches light. If you position that bucket far away from the subject you'll only get a limited amount of reflected light off your subject that happens to correspond to some particular angle.

However, if you position the same bucket close to the subject and you keep the radius of the bucket the same size you'll collect more light because you'll catch reflections from the other light sources (floor, teammates, trees, etc). That's my thought at least...

I'm not sure how zoom fits into this bucket analogy. I need to do some more thinking about it and reading about f-stop ratings. It's still too early for me to tell if it's bunk or not, but I know that anecdotally my shots from up high don't seem as bright as much shots when I'm closer to my subjects.

I also observed something interesting while post-processing my shots from last night's volleyball game. I took some shots with the 17-55/2.8 lens, and the depth of field is way way wider than with my 70-200mm. I should have realized this, and while post processing it was immediately apparent to me.

Depth of field is a factor of aperture and focal length. When you're at shorter focal lengths the depth of field is larger. If you're shooting at 400mm and your subject is standing 20 feet from you the depth of field is very narrow. But, if you're shooting at 17mm and your subject is 20 feet from you the depth of field is wider.

This was overly apparent to me when I looked at my shots of players during serves. The player in focus is sharp, but to my surprise the background was also pretty sharp. I didn't realize this when I bought the lens even though I've looked at depth of field calculations a dozen times.

During the final game of the match I adjusted my position and prepared to shoot the Maryland team after the game. They were poised to win it and I wanted to capture the moment when the celebrate after the final point is won.

A Maryland representative approached me and we had a brief conversation about who I was shooting for and credentials. I'm giving some thought to offering my business card to the gentleman during the next game so that he can take a look at our coverage. Maybe it will help us get credentials for these events...

It seems pretty silly to me that we wouldn't be able to get credentials. I've been to 4 volleyball games now and have not seen a single photographer or writer from a media outlet. If we're out there writing about Maryland we're doing Maryland a service by promoting their athletics.

At the same time I think Maryland should be involved with what we're doing. They wouldn't appreciate it if we're going out and shooting events and writing articles that are poking fun at the players or making other inflammatory negative remarks. We're not going to do that, but somebody else certainly might. As a result, Maryland should be reviewing what people are writing and should be in the business of actively approving or denying media credentials to organizations like the DC Sports Box.

Right now we're kind of just out there shooting and writing without any oversight. There are certainly freedom of the press issues, but there should be some oversight on Maryland's part to make sure we're conforming with university, ACC, and NCAA regulations. If I were in Maryland's shoes I wouldn't be comfortable knowing someone is out there shooting and writing about games and I don't know about it...

That's why I'm thinking that it might make sense to approach the individual media relations person during a game and give them my business card that has the URL for our site. Under normal circumstances we would submit our credential request for the game and be granted the credential and then Maryland would have full oversight or the ability to review our coverage.

But we're in this weird state right now where we're being denied credentials because we haven't covered any other Maryland athletic events. So while in this weird state we're doing this rogue coverage and at some point it's going to have to happen "on the level." The question in my mind is: when will we get to a point where we've done enough "rogue" coverage to populate our "Maryland Terrapins" section and demonstrate our commitment to regular and substantial coverage of athletic events?

I benefit from the knowledge of my own personal commitment to Maryland athletics, but the media relations people don't share that same knowledge. They can't tell if DC Sports Box (or me for that matter) will be here 3 months from now. But it seems to me like Maryland is in an awkward position right now because they don't have any visibility into the product we produce (our articles and photos). From my perspective the solution is overwhelmingly clear: work with us so you have oversight.

The sooner Maryland realizes that we're committed to covering their events the sooner they can have oversight and visibility into our work. And the sooner that happens for them the better off they'll be... I hope they come to realize this soon...

At the conclusion of field hockey I walked over to my beat up old 1994 Oldsmobile "98 Regency Elite", popped the trunk, and extracted my Think Tank International bag.

I put my 400mm lens away and put my 17-55/f2.8 lens on my D2H and my 70-200/f2.8 lens on my D200. I thought about adding the SB-800 to the D2H/17-55 combo but then decided against it. You can't use flash photography during the game, and the SB-800 is a pretty big piece of equipment. I didn't want to tow it around with me during the 2 hour match.

So I decided to bring my bag in with me. I thought pretty hard about that choice because I knew I was going to head into Maryland Madness after the volleyball game and I didn't know how easily I would be able to move around with my bag. I didn't even know if I would be admitted to Comcast with my carrying bag.

Volleyball started at 7pm and it usually goes 1:45 or so. That would put us at 8:45 by the time the match let out. If I had to return to my car to drop off my bag it would put an additional 15 minutes onto my transition time from Volleyball to Basketball. That's bad, but it would mean I would be practically guaranteed entrance to Comcast (because my bag was in the car). You can read my Volleyball article over at the DC Sports Box by clicking here.

I decided to go for it and hope that my luck with the CSC event staff would continue. It was no problem carrying my bag into Volleyball and I waited for a timeout before I walked in front of the crowd and down to the far side of the gym where I placed my bag. I was all ready to go from having swapped lenses out in the parking lot, so I stood on the sidelines and took some shots while waiting for the timeout.

The Terps wore their white uniforms for tonight's game and that helps a lot. Whenever there are poor lighting conditions a highly reflective color (like white) can make a big difference in the quality of your shots. I don't have any concrete metrics about how many stops of light it can add but I believe it helps.

I took a few photos with my 17-55 without the flash and they came out pretty well. I ended up swapping bodies when I shot with the 17-55 because I wanted to use my D200 for almost all of my shots. As I've mentioned before, I love the D2H during well lit events, but in low light it struggles at high ISOs. It's very noisy and the lack of pixels make for poor overall image quality.

It was kind of difficult to swap bodies and lenses, and I wish I had a belt with a few bags. Al said he has a belt he would give me and I'm going to take him up on that offer. I was basically using the D2H as an expensive bag and just using it to hold my 17-55/2.8 lens. I never shot a single frame with it during the Volleyball game, but I did swap my lenses several times.

With a belt and a bag it would mean I would just carry my D200 and on my belt I would have a carrying case for my 70-200 and a bag for my 17-55. I'd simply pop the 70-200/2.8 lens off the body and put it in the case and extract the 17-55 from the other case and place it on the body. That's going to make life a whole lot easier. I can even keep my SB-800 on my belt too, and my media wallet and some batteries.

I noticed during the last game that 90% of my shots were of spikes. That results in a whole lot of pictures of Doyle, Mary Beth Brown, and Michelle Kenning. They're the attackers for Maryland and they spike a lot. But Gillming, Doucet, Schmelzle, and Profit are left in the back court without very many photos. Schmelzle and Gillming come up to the net from time to time, but it's Mary Beth Brown, Doyle, and Kenning that are the presence at the net.

I decided to try to get some more shots of the backcourt players and it's really difficult. They move around a lot and it's tough. But I managed to get a few of them bumping the ball off a serve, or setting to someone in the front line. When I post-processed and wrote up my DC Sports Box article I was pleased that I managed to shoot a pretty wide variety of players (rather than just the 3 up at the front line spiking and blocking).

After the game ended the players hung around on the court for a little bit. It's parent's weekend at Maryland this weekend and a lot of family members were in town. It's always nice to see parents come out and support their child as well as other team members, and it makes for some great photos. Before the game ended I went over to my Think Tank and grabbed my SB-800 and attached my 17-55 to my D200. I put my 70-200/2.8 and D2H back into the bag in anticipation of just needing a wide zoom for the after-game photos.

I walked around the crowd and got some pretty good shots of the players hugging their families and celebrating the win. None of the photos made it up to DC Sports Box because they're not game related, but I kept the photos in case any parents want them.

I had 2 or 3 different parents ask me if they could purchase my photos. Like always, I tell them that I can't sell them photos because NCAA, the ACC, or Maryland prohibits it. But if they would like a copy of the pictures they can email me and I'd be happy to send them whatever I have.

One particular parent had an interest in this and asked me if I had any pictures of Kenning, Schmelzle, and Gillming together. I took almost 1000 pictures during the game and I replied "probably, but I don't know off the top of my head". He then told me that they all went to the same high school and he would like to send a photo of them back to the HS for inclusion in their school newspaper.

I thought that was pretty neat so I gave him my business card and asked him to email me. I also took a photo of him, his wife, and their daughter and offered to send it to him as well. Lastly, I made a mental note to take pictures of those 3 players during tomorrow night's game against Miami.

Walking around the crowd and shooting was a lot of fun, but I had to get moving if I wanted to get to Maryland Madness. I put my 70-200/2.8 back onto my D200 and moved my 17-55 onto my D2H and attached the SB-800 to the D2H. I then grabbed my bag and headed out the door to walk across the hall to Comcast.

After the field hockey game I raced home to post-process my pictures in time to make it back to the Volleyball game at 5pm.

The Field Hockey game let out around 3:15 and I was at home on the computer picking over my pictures by around 3:30. It's so nice living so close to Maryland and covering their events! This weekend is full of events, and I didn't want to get too backlogged on post-processing, publishing of my pictures, and article writing.

The field hockey shots came out pretty well except the image saturation looked too rich. This seemed strange to me because the photos looked fine in Preview but looked really rich in Aperture. I had noticed this before but didn't have much time to investigate it. After the Volleyball game I took some time to look into image saturation in Preview, Aperture, and Photoshop.

I noticed that in the Preferences for Preview there is an Image tab and it allows you to adjust saturation. I also read online somewhere (after lots of unsuccessful google searches for "preview automatic image saturation") that Preview does an auto-adjustment of saturation when it loads the pictures. That sure seems strange to me but I'll buy it...

When I look at the same picture in Photoshop, Aperture, and Preview the Photoshop and Aperture version look similar but Preview looks totally different. I looked into how to make an image saturation preset in Aperture, and to my surprise it was not too difficult.

I set up an image saturation preset that reduces saturation to 60%. It's somewhat difficult to apply this preset to all the images in an album, but it's doable. It takes a long time for that operation to complete because Aperture re-generates it's preview of all the pictures in the album. So don't apply that when you have 200+ photos!

It took awhile to figure out the image saturation issue and that was kind of frustrating. Earlier this evening at the Volleyball shoot I reduced my saturation on the D200 and the images look much more appropriate. I think that when you're outdoors in a lot of light you can get away with +2 image saturation in some instances, but it seems like when you are indoors and in low flourescent light that +2 image saturation just makes all the white players look red and all the black players look pink. Asians turn a weird orange. It's not very flattering!

The volleyball shoot went extremely well. This is consistent with previous "second event" shoots. After learning the ropes in the "first event" my second round of coverage is also remarkably better. I know a few better spots from which to shoot, I know the flow of the game, and I know the players a little bit better. As a result it helps me anticipate what's going to happen and capture a shot.

I spent very little time on the same side as the Maryland players and instead shot 90% of the game from the opposite side of the court. This allowed me to capture the Maryland player's faces as they spiked, blocked, dug, etc. The only time I broke from this pattern was at the end of the game when Maryland was at match-point. I wanted to be on the Maryland side, and down low, to capture the team when they celebrated after the win. I'm glad I moved for that shot because it came out pretty well.

I spent some time at varying heights in the stands. Some of the time I was up on the highest row and got some good shots of the players faces above the net. Other times I was down low and I captured their faces through the net. It's difficult to autofocus on players when you're shooting through the net.

The players stand on the ground, but their faces are still behind the net. You can autofocus on them but it's difficult. Sometimes the AF system gets fooled and locks on the net rather than the player. It's also difficult because when the player jumps you often need to re-focus on them while they are in the air. Since they move so quickly it's difficult to keep them in the center area where AF is being applied.

I also found that shooting portrait style comes out much better than landscape. Much of the game is vertical and shooting portrait style allows you to see how high up the players have jumped. Unfortunately it makes presentation in a gallery somewhat problematic because most galleries are set up to display images in landscape format.

I shot the game at ISO 800 and ISO1000 and a shutter speed of 1/200 or 1/250. A white balanace setting of flourescent was appropriate, but I could have used some tweaking if I had a gray card. 1/250th wasn't enough to completely stop action, but it did the job most of the time. Shooting anywhere faster than 1/250th would have required me to go to ISO1250 and I wanted to keep the pictures as noise-free as possible.

I really wish that my D200 had a microphone in it. I took several pictures of the scoreboard this evening to help me recall the pace of the game. I would have also liked to use the microphone to take notes on some of the shots. It would have helped me in captioning my photos. Rather than just saying "Player X blocks a shot during ..." I could say something more exact like "Player X puts the Terrapins up N-M in the 2nd game during ...". I wonder if the D300 will have a microphone...

Tomorrow should be a lot of fun too. A women's soccer game at 1pm followed by field hockey at 2pm. I'm going to leave the women's soccer game early to head over to field hockey. I think that I'll have enough time in an hour to get some good shots of the soccer team, and I want to spend more time on field hockey.

Without a credential for soccer I'm restricted to a certain area of the field. And even with 400mm there's a lot of action that occurs on the far end of the field that is out of my reach. If I could go into the credentialed photographer spaces it would allow me to shoot from a more central location and I would be able to reach most of the field.

We're currently holding off on requesting Maryland credentials in order to build up our portfolio of Maryland events. At some point in the future we're going to put in requests (probably when women's basketball starts up) and make a case for what we've done this Fall. But for now we don't want to make our case too early.

A good friend of mine that works for the Athletic Department at Maryland told me about a Volleyball game tonight he was attending, and I jumped at the opportunity to shoot a new sport!

The Terrapin Volleyball team plays in Comcast Pavillion, which is a gymnasium attached to Comcast Center. I believe that the men's and women's basketball teams practice in there during the regular season. I had previously been inside the Pavillion prior to a women's basketball game but other than that I was pretty much unaware of it's existence.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I walked up to the Pavillion. I didn't know how many people would be there, what the situation would be with photography, and what the lighting would be like. I was actually pleasantly surprised by all three: the lighting wasn't bad, there were a lot of people, and I was able to move about somewhat freely on the spectator side of the court.

I arrived about 5 minutes before the first game, and that was plenty of time to take some sample photos to work out the lighting. I originally used the incandescent white balance but after looking at some of the shots I realized that they were too cold (too blue). I changed my white balance to stadium lighting (flourescent I guess) and it improved significantly. I really need to get a white-balance card and start manually setting the white balance.

The ISO I started off with was 1600. I hate using ISO 1600 but I thought it was pretty dark in the gym (compared to other venues I've shot) and so I thought I'd give 1600 a shot. I increased my shutter speed to 1/500 of a second and took some shots. The exposure was adequate.

After determining that 1/500, f2.8, and ISO1600 would "work" I started making adjustments to improve the image quality. I reduced the ISO to 1250 and slowed down the shutter speed to 1/400th of a second. That made things better without any noticeable increase in motion. I stuck with ISO 1250 and 1/400th shutter speed for most of the volleyball game.

I pulled out the 400mm lens as well as the 70-200mm lens. The 400mm was overkill. I got some face shots of the players, but during the match it was practically useless. There was simply too much action and I couldn't track and focus quickly enough. The 70-200mm was sufficient for all of the shots I took and if I attend another Volleyball game I probably won't even take out the 400mm lens.

I didn't know where to stand to get some good shots. They had some ribbons keeping people behind a certain area and I stayed behind it, but I kept getting blocked by the gymnastics ballgirls or the referee. It was also difficult to track the girls as they played because they move around so much and leap up in the air. I got a lot of out-of-focus shots because the camera locked onto the net or the background (rather than the player).

I took some of my shots from the floor in the middle of the court and they came out really well. Unfortunately I don't think that's a place I'm allowed to be because during the first time out one of the referees asked if I could move back or move to another spot. I obliged and moved to the back of the court.

The first set of shots I took were from the Maryland side where the girls were defending. I thought this would be a good spot because the net would not be in the way. As the match progressed I quickly realized that all of my shots were of the back of their heads! Those shots stink, so I changed my position.

I walked down to the far end of the court so that I could shoot from behind UNC and face the Terrapins. Those shots were considerably better because I got to see their faces. But then I ran into the problem of the white line at the top of the net. The girls would jump up high enough such that the white line blocked their face. It didn't happen all the time, but it did happen a lot of the time.

I ended up moving up into the bleachers for the 3rd game and that seemed to be a very good spot. It was up high enough where I could clearly see the players faces when they jumped up. I wanted to get more towards the middle of the bleachers but the stadium was very busy!

In the 3rd period I decided to lower the ISO to 800 and reduce the shutter speed to 1/320th of a second. To my surprise the shots came out very well! Any time you can go down to below ISO 1000 is a good time! The ISO 800 shots from up in the stands were some of my best shots, and I plan to start off with that the next time I attend a Volleyball event.

This is what I was referring to in my last post about understanding the mechanics of the game and your equipment. Going to a new arena and shooting a new sport for the first time is difficult and you're just trying to learn how your gear performs and how the game progresses. The second time around is much better. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's game against NC State because I can apply everything I learned tonight.